Thursday, October 01, 2015

Fighting over the wingnut trophy

by digby

This is a funny article by Weigel about a spat between Ted Cruz and Rand Paul over who can take credit for the Planned Parenthood crusade:

But the fight over Planned Parenthood funding put the spat, and the strategies, under a spotlight. Paul, who has cultivated a relationship with Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, claimed leadership of a "nationwide movement" to defund the family planning behemoth. Before the summer recess, he secured a vote on a standalone defund bill. It failed -- and Cruz, without naming the sponsor, called it a "legislative show vote," inferior to nixing Planned Parenthood funds in the must-pass continuing resolution to fund the government.

Paul and Cruz had been on these terms before. In 2013, during the Texan's similarly pyrrhic crusade to defund the Affordable Care Act, Paul had offered short-term extensions designed to allow debate without a shutdown. In his 2015 memoir, A Time for Truth, Cruz wrote that his "friend Rand Paul" had undermined him, blindsiding him in a colloquy on the Senate floor.

"His questions echoed the skeptical attacks of Mitch McConnell, and I marveled that Rand had decided not to be with us in this fight," said Cruz.

The Planned Parenthood fight allowed each man to fight the same battle, without the editorial delay. Cruz, not Paul, was demanding and getting credit for the great social conservative cause of the summer. To Paul's great frustration, Cruz lobbed verbal grenades at the leadership, dubbed himself a "fighter," and got applause even when he handily lost. For all the furor about Planned Parenthood, Cruz did not really slow down the compromise that funded the government.

Paul dropped the subtlety. "Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names, which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the Senate," Paul sniped on Fox News Radio this week. "As a consequence, he can’t get anything done legislatively. He is pretty much done for and stifled and it’s really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem.”

Cruz sniped right back in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. “The attacks he directed at me are not terribly surprising," he said, "particularly given that Rand campaigned for Mitch McConnell and then Mitch McConnell in turn has endorsed Rand for president. But I have no intention of responding in kind to Rand’s attacks.”

I hate to sound like Donald Trump but that has the stench of leu-seurs all over it:

Neither critique addressed the issue that Cruz allies are making to close the sale. It was the same one undergirding the "liberty leaders" email -- that Cruz is raising enough money to beat the establishment, while Rand is struggling. Also relevant, but said by no one, is that the trial of Paul's super PAC leaders, on corruption charges, begins in Iowa next week.